1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates in general to signal communication devices and in particular to diversity receivers. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to data symbol detection in diversity receivers.
2. Description of the Related Art
An ever increasing demand for wireless communication services has driven requirements for higher data throughput and greater capabilities within wireless communication devices. Unfortunately, performance degradation generally accompanies increased data rates and greater device capabilities. As a result, detection systems for wireless communication devices are challenged to compensate for this performance degradation by providing better receiver processing and detection capabilities. Traditionally, wireless communication devices use some form of equalization and/or maximum likelihood detection mechanisms to compensate for performance degradation. The performance degradation can be caused by burst noise, fading and delay distortion resulting from having multiple signal paths between a transmitter and a receiver. As wireless communication devices provide an ever increasing range of capabilities, processing complexity increases. Furthermore, when implemented with finite-arithmetic hardware, traditional equalization and detection algorithms require a significant number of bits for full fidelity. To reduce hardware implementation cost, the number of bits may be reduced but the algorithms suffer a corresponding performance degradation. There is a need to develop reasonable cost hardware implementations with reduced bit-widths while maintaining good performance.